


Keep me as the apple of your eye; hide me in the shadow of your wings

by ssantisheep



Series: Assassin's creed ficlets [2]
Category: Assassin's Creed - All Media Types
Genre: Another Desmond miles centric ficlet, Because it is fucking weird, But this time it's about his relationship with the apple, Gen, and also nobody really bat an eye about it in the game, but we should, slight Body dysmorphic disorder (BDD)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-13
Updated: 2020-07-13
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:20:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25246042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ssantisheep/pseuds/ssantisheep
Summary: Desmond never felt really at ease in his body.Or: Desmond finally found what he was missing all his life. It's not what he expected.
Relationships: Desmond Miles & The Apple of Eden
Series: Assassin's creed ficlets [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1818763
Comments: 9
Kudos: 74





	Keep me as the apple of your eye; hide me in the shadow of your wings

**Author's Note:**

> Back again with another quick ficlet about my boy Desmond miles. Glad to see that I am not the only one loving this boy and wanting more content about him ;)
> 
> This one is centered on him and the apple. as per the tags, there is some slight Body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) so... be careful with that? It's not really detailed or anything mostly because I didn't feel like I could treat well such a serious subject.  
> The title came from Psalm 17:8 apparently if I believed the internet.
> 
> I hope you will enjoy my little contribution!

Desmond never felt really at ease in his body. Truth be told, when he was still at the Farm he didn’t have much time to think about it: he was training morning to evening and what little time off he had he spent it contemplating what life might have been and regretting being born in a fucking sect.

He might have mentioned it once to his mother he thinks -she was still kind of shitty in retrospect because, really, who let their husband scarred  _ for life _ their child and not get mighty pissed but just shrugged because scars were apparently a natural part of raising a child- and she might have told him something along the line of “You’re a teenager, that’s normal,” before making sure he had cleaned his blade properly.

He finally ran away at sixteen and for the first few weeks, he was angry, hungry, scared, and too busy looking for a place to sleep and eat to really care about what he looked like.

Once he settled down a bit though that… otherness of his body hit him back again. But this time he had access to the internet and heard about transgender people and wondered if maybe he felt weird because he was in the wrong body.

He tried things, little things, changing pronouns, changing clothes. Being a girl, a woman didn’t feel like he helped him feel better. Being neither didn’t either.

He talked to people, tried other things but nothing seems to work. He still felt like he wasn’t really the owner of his own body.

Abstergo happened and oh boy. If he had known... The animus decupled this feeling in an indescribable way. He was  _ literally _ in somebody else’s body (or it sure did feel like it) and it was worse. And yet… There was something

He didn’t know how to explain it except to say that he felt like he was running toward something. Toward something he had been searching for his whole life without ever knowing. It was… Weird.

(But he was getting used to weird he thought.)

Then Lucy turned out to be an assassin in disguise and helped him run away. Before forcing him in another animus again to be someone else’s,  _ again _ .

(and the damn feeling that wouldn’t go away.)

The bleeding effect didn’t help any. He saw other people, people that should have been dead for centuries, he didn’t remember who he was sometimes, and apparently he also sometimes forgot to speak in English.

_ It’s just getting better and better, isn’t it? _

But still, this feeling of getting closer to a goal was thrumming under his skins telling him to keep going. To make it through.

His connection to Ezio’s life and Ezio himself was stronger than his connection to Altair’s -Rebecca proudly told him that’s because Abstergo’s animus was terrible compared to her baby- so when he saw, felt, the apple through Ezio it felt…Different. Like the apple was what he had been yearning for all this damn time. Which just didn’t make a lot of sense.

Until of course there was a Goddess called Minerva who was speaking to him directly, as if she could see him and who was telling him that the world was ending. ( _ How nice of her _ , desmond thought bitterly.)

For a while, even though he still felt uneasy in his own body -despite moving like a master assassin’s- he thought that this was it. He was made to hear the prophecy -apparently- and to save the world -what a joke- and so that was what he felt like he had to do.

Maybe once he had saved the world he would feel better?

He would finally feel like his skin was his own, like his body belonged to him. He would maybe stop hiding under hoodies and ill-fitting jeans because he would finally be proud of how he looked?

(One can still dream right?)

Seeing the apple with his own eyes though… He yearned for it in a way he couldn’t explain. Of course, the moment he touched it all went to shit when he was forced to kill Lucy and then woke up in the animus because apparently they thought that would be a grand idea.

Being incorporeal in the animus was weird though. He didn’t have that feeling of wrongness anymore. He attributed it to the fact that he didn’t have a body really. (or couldn’t feel it.)

He thought about talking about it with Clay -who weird as he was, had actually good advice and a different perspective on many things- but decided not to, mainly because the other man was urging him to go through the last bit of Ezio’s life (and also Altair’s).

And then Clay died -a second time- so Desmond couldn’t ask him anymore.

But it’s okay. Because once he woke up, he realizes then that he felt weird because the apple wasn’t there.

The isu made him perfect in a certain way so he could use the apple. They had made this apple specifically for him or at least changed it so it could fit him like a glove really.

And that’s what had been missing all his life. That’s where the wrongness, the otherness came from. He was missing something almost vital. The apple.

It’s not even about the apple forcing its will to him and corrupting him -it doesn’t, in fact, hold any attraction on this front- it’s just that when he has it close -in his backpack, in his hands- it feels right.

It feels like that’s where it belongs.

Which is pretty messed up. People tend to tell that things feel right about, oh, maybe a job, another person, a house even. Not a fucking piece of alien tech that had tried to enslave other people before.

So, it’s probably not normal that he never felt safer with the apple in his hands. (well… It’s a weapon too though… So maybe  _ that part _ is normal.)

He tried not to dwell on it too much: it won’t really help things in the grand scheme of things to tells those things to the others.

For one they might try to take the apple from him because they will think it is controlling him.

He knows it’s not.

He can’t even explain how he knows that the apple’s juju is not working on him. (Well he thinks the fact that Juno felt the need to manifest instead of just trying to whisper in his mind through the apple is a pretty dead give away but then…)

He just knows that the apple can’t control him. He thinks he has to thank Minerva -she must have made sure that he could yield it without any weird repercussion-. And maybe thanks Ezio who wasn’t controlled either but had to resist it some. So, Desmond knows how the apple  _ feels _ when it’s trying to worm its way into your fucking mind.

It’s not doing it now. Except for that first moment -and maybe that was more a combination of the apple’s natural power and the temple being one of Juno’s than the apple’s work alone- the apple hadn’t even  _ tried _ .

As he was saying it’s fucking weird.

But that’s why as he is living through Connor’s life -never get old uh? - that he starts feeling that a person that can manipulate the apple as it wishes, someone that can hold all that power without any compensation cannot go unstopped.

And he is feeling more and more that the Grand Temple is going to be his tomb.

Finally,  _ finally, _ he feels right, he feels he belongs in this strange fucking world and of course he is going to die.

“What are you thinking about?” Shaun asks him in a rare show of concern.

He looks at the apple resting in front of him.

“Nothing.” At Shaun inquiring eyebrow he adds: “Fucking isu’s bullshit.”

And that sums up things pretty well in fact.

Indeed, as he lay dying on the altar of saving the world, he thinks one last time “Fuck Isu’s bullshit.”

**Author's Note:**

> If you liked it don't hesitate to leave a comment or a kudos! ^^
> 
> Good luck for this week everybody!


End file.
